


A Scrooge x Duckworth Ship Manifesto (Why ship McDuckworth?)

by katikacreations



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 1987), DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Essays, M/M, Meta, Ship Manifesto, Shipping, non-fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 02:56:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16884324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katikacreations/pseuds/katikacreations
Summary: An illustrated essay on why I ship Scrooge McDuck and his butler Duckworth (archived from Tumblr).





	A Scrooge x Duckworth Ship Manifesto (Why ship McDuckworth?)

 

 

> _PYLADES    I'll take care of you._  
>  _ORESTES    It's rotten work._  
>  _PYLADES    Not to me. Not if it's you._
> 
> _ORESTES    I'm a dead man. There! That gets the bad news over quickly._  
>  _PYLADES    Is there room for me in your grave? I want us to go on sharing everything._
> 
>  

(Eurepides' Orestes, Anne Carson and Andrew Wilson translations.)*

 

So, going into this, I never particularly shipped Scrooge with anyone from the comics or Ducktales 87, obviously Scrooge loves Goldie a great deal, but they never end up together in canon (not that that’s ever stopped me from shipping something) and I know I was wanting someone to hook this old man up with that could be a steady, positive influence on his life, even if they couldn’t always be there for him, since as we know, Scrooge is often pretty miserable and lonely in canon! In Ducktales 2017 in particular it seems like he’s had several dark periods in his life.

Then the McMystery episode happened, and Ghost Duckworth appeared, and laid a bounty of shipping potential at my feet! What kind of material? OK, let’s go through it.

When the triplets first find out it’s Scrooge’s birthday, they immediately want to throw him a party and Beakley tells them not to:

 

 

> _Mrs. Beakley: Mr. McDuck has a strict no birthday party rule. He hates the reminder that he’s–_  
>  _Louie: Literally the oldest person he knows?_  
>  _Dewey: (laughs)_  
>  _Huey: But our most epic relative deserves the most epic party ever!_  
>  _Webby: Uh…I don’t know… He hasn’t had a good one since before his old butler Duckworth died._

What was Beakley going to say before Louie cut her off? What does Scrooge hate the reminder of? There’s a lot of things she  _could_  have been about to say, the most obvious being “hates the reminder that he’s another year older” but…

 

 

> _“Another year older, another year richer, the house all to myself, time to celebrate with peace and quiet–”_

The very next scene, Scrooge doesn’t seem unhappy about his birthday - as long as there’s no  _party._ He doesn’t care about being another year older.

Then the triplets spring their surprise party trap on him and Scrooge is  _not_  happy.

He even tries and fails to escape by sticking a mask on a balloon. You get the idea. Scrooge is having a miserable time.

But so, Scrooge really seems to hate parties, right?  Except…

 

 

> _Glomgold: No, I was trying to kill Scrooge! It’s like my whole thing!_  
>  _Mark: FYI, you’re terrible at your thing._  
>  _Ma Beagle: If he were every gonna do it, he’d have to do it while Beakley’s gone._  
>  _Glomgold: Ugh. I hate that woman!_  
>  _Ma Beagle: Me too! She’s the absolute worst!_  
>  _Glomgold: You know who I miss?_  
>  _Both: Duckworth!_  
>  _Ma Beagle: Ah, he threw the best parties!_  
>  _Glomgold: Ohh, that man was an artist. He never would have let us in here!_

So Duckworth used to throw parties that Scrooge enjoyed (according to Webby), and they were apparently such great parties that people who never got to go to them (legitimately anyway, they might have snuck in) heard about how amazing they were. Scrooge McDuck, infamous miser and tightwad, let someone use his home and his money to throw amazing parties that all of Duckburg talked about?

But we know Scrooge doesn’t like parties. So what makes Duckworth’s parties so special? 

Scrooge watching Duckworth dispose of his unwanted party guests. Look at that  _face_. He’s delighted.

 

 

> _Huey: The person with the best reason for getting Scrooge out of the party was Scrooge himself!_  
>  _Dewey: S-s-say what? Sorry, I’m not used to talking. Beep boop beep, sound effect._  
>  _Louie: Wait, what about Black Arts’ ghost?_  
>  _Scrooge: Not **his**  ghost! _

  _Scrooge: _ **My**  ghost!_ _

I have no words really, look how goddamn pleased he is about all of this. Also how he immediately feels he has to stake his claim over Duckworth even in front of the kids. This is a greedy old man who is very possessive: Duckworth is  _his_ , and he wants to be sure that everyone around him knows it.

Duckworth returns Scrooge’s wallet to him - the kids are still terrified but Scrooge is smug and having a great time.

_(Quick aside: goddamn look at how happy he is)_

__

What a smug pair of bastards. The kids are still pretty freaked out but they’re just having a laugh at their expense. Duckworth and Scrooge are just so used to working together.

Scrooge’s expression when he saw that Duckworth had returned from the dead. 

 

 

> _Scrooge: That preposterous prestidigitator conjured up a spirit alright. Unfortunately for him, it was the ghost of my most loyal servant._

Duckworth came back from the  _dead_ and immediately jumps to serving Scrooge’s every need. He doesn’t need to do that unless he wants to - he’s  _dead_ , that voids employer-employee contract. Hell, it voids marriage contracts (till death do us part), but apparently Duckworth’s feelings are stronger than that, and he wants to go on serving Scrooge McDuck even after death. 

 

 

> _Duckworth: I returned to the corporeal world to find the mansion full of Mr. McDuck’s enemies, and even worse, hosting them at a sub-par party.  
>  Huey: Hey!  
>  Duckworth: So I did what any butler worth his coattails would. **Alleviate** the situation. _

He spirits Scrooge off to a safe panic room. Brings him fresh popcorn to snack on. Locks the misbehaving children and unwanted guests into the main hall so he can deal with them at his leisure. Terrorizes them with extreme melodrama to teach them all a lesson about throwing bad parties and annoying/threatening Scrooge. Throws the unwanted guests out. 

Contrast all of this with the fact that Black Arts Beagle, who is using magic to summon Duckworth still wasn’t able to  _force him to obey_  commands no matter what he did. You could argue that’s because Black Arts isn’t a very good magician, but the point is: his commands are effortlessly brushed off by Duckworth’s spirit, meanwhile Scrooge doesn’t even explicitly tell Duckworth to do anything (that we see on-screen anyway), and Duckworth bends over backwards to anticipate and serve Scrooge’s needs.

 

Where was Duckworth before he was summoned? The show is vague on this (I’m sure they want to avoid directly addressing heaven/hell afterlife issues), but [they imply Duckworth’s spirit was already in the house before Black Arts summoned him](https://suspendersofdisbelief.tumblr.com/post/174360357901/so-do-you-ring-a-bell-when-you-need-duckworth-or).

_(Link goes to this entry on Frank Angones' (Co-producer and Story Editor of DT17) tumblr blog:_

)

 

Perhaps he was non-corporeal but lingering in the house due to unfinished business? Haunting the house (or Scrooge himself) and unable to move on? Why wasn’t he able to move on? What unfinished business does Duckworth have? 

 

 

> _Duckworth: I do have a flare for the **dramatic**._

Boy does he ever. First of all there’s Duckworth’s new demon form. Is that something he just invented for fun/to scare people at the party? Is that something more inherent to his new ghostly existence? We don’t really know but you could interpret it lots of ways both angsty and fun. 

Everything about how he acts in the episode is very theatrical too. Killing the lights, speaking in a spooky voice, disappearing people in the dark, leaving notes for the kids, chasing the kids through the halls with an axe… I presume he did the latter because he preferred to scare the crap out of them while herding them to Scrooge’s location (and thus teach them a lesson) rather than just tell them what was up and have that be the end of it. He is, I think, a bit salty about Huey’s repeated stated desire to outshine him.

But the point is that Duckworth is  _very_  dramatic now, but it’s worth noting that Duckworth’s character has always been depicted as a flamboyant and effeminate man. 

_(There’s no straight explanation for this outfit)_  
  
I’m sure that the original Ducktales 87 staff probably never intended for Duckworth to be gay, but, well,  _whoops,_ sorry not sorry guys, you made him gay to be your comic relief so now I’m gonna make him gay for serious, those are just the rules. He belongs to Us Gays now. 

When you add this new dimension of ultra-theatrical super-dramatic ghost Duckworth, now he’s even more firmly in the role of shit-stirring sassy drama queen, only he has less of the softness of Ducktales 87 and is more catty and mean.

This only becomes more obvious when he interacts with Beakley and we see just how nasty he can be.

 

 

> _Webby: Hi Duckworth!  
>  Duckworth: Mrs. Beakley. How nice of you to finally return after abandoning your post. Thankfully I was here to pick up your slack. Tell me, do you typically keep the house this shabby?  
>  Mrs. Beakley: I preferred it when you were dead._

Since Webby reacts casually to seeing his ghost, we assume that she knew him while he was alive, and her understated reaction is just Classic Webby behavior. 

In traditional household servant systems, butlers do outrank housekeepers in a way, but not  _really_ , they’re basically two sides of the same coin, butlers run one side of the household and housekeepers run the other, but maybe Duckworth worked for Scrooge longer? Was a closer, more  _intimate_  friend to him?

Maybe Scrooge likes him better and so he’s completely fearless in giving Beakley his brutal negative opinion about how she’s been taking care of the house while he’s been gone?

I’d accept the argument that maybe Duckworth is fearless because he’s dead,  _except_  Beakley doesn’t seem at all surprised by Duckworth’s attitude: she seems used to it.   
  
But okay, so that’s the episode itself, but what else?

The name Duckworth, in the real world, comes pretty much exclusively from Northwestern England, a region known industrial mills and factories. Assuming Duckworth comes from this region, he could have had a similar childhood to Scrooge, extreme poverty, child labor, and seeking a better life for himself through hard work, rising through the ranks to become a butler for the mega-rich - not an easy task for someone coming from a poor family. 

Does Duckworth have any family of his own? There’s never been any indication (maybe something in a comic once but I’m not counting that), but being cast out by your birth family is a pretty common experience for gay folks, as is finding and making new family for yourself. He would have had that in Scrooge, Donald, Della, Beakley and Webby - and when you find your own family, it’s not something you let go of easily.

Working for Scrooge, Duckworth doesn’t have to act macho or suppress his (one assumes) love of homemaking and other less-than-manly pursuits (theater?), he’s free to be himself without fear or shame, whatever other flaws Scrooge may have, he's very protective of the people around him. And we’ve seen that Scrooge makes a habit of keeping people around him who are a little off the wall, sometimes for their own good rather than because they're good at their jobs (Gyro, Launchpad) _._

Also, remember the first episode?

Scrooge starts Ducktales 2017 as a miserable old man. We know he wasn’t always like this, and no doubt there are many factors. His family troubles are a major one, but now we know that at some unspecified date Duckworth died. Probably recently enough that Webby remembers him, but long enough ago that Scrooge has had time to get over the initial grief and move on, but still be sadder in general, because his life is missing someone important to him. 

Note: Victorians were  _epic_  mourners and Scrooge is solidly a Victorian, having been born in 1867.

So there you go. Just a couple of reasons that we ship McDuckworth!

* * *

 

 

*   _In 1734,[George Frederic Handel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederic_Handel)'s opera [Oreste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreste) was premiered in London's [Covent Garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covent_Garden). The fame of Lucian's works in the 18th century, as well as the generally well-known tradition of Greco-Roman heroic homoeroticism, made it natural for theater audiences of that period to have recognized an intense, romantic, if not positively homoerotic quality, to the relationship between Orestes and Pylades. _([Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pylades#Pylades_and_Orestes))

**Author's Note:**

> And if you enjoyed this, I'm working on a McDuckworth fic here:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/16901922/chapters/39705882


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